Saturday, June 03, 2017

Cultivating Gardens And Other Living Things


Remember a couple days ago I finally started to work on the garden space is allocated? I was a little intimidated I I must confess. But I jumped in and started the process. I got the small shovel to work the dirt and jumped in and dug up some of the dirt in my box. That was my start and that was about all that I did for a couple days. I needed to get some plants the transplant into the box. They have starts over at the True Value but there's also sort of a nursery across the street from my apartment complex. They have a lot of nice plants so I figured that would be the place I would go.

It was midmorning by the time I finally got over to the nursery. I'm still trying to figure out the operation. I think it is run by a fellow and his wife. Over the morning as I visited with the proprietor began to fill me in that he used to work at this place when he was much younger and then the guy who owned the place was diagnosed with stage III prostate cancer and basically asked the fellow to take over the operation. I sensed the owner went fast. I later found out the current owners think Eric and when I asked him when did he shut the operation down for winter he said December 26. I can hardly believe that until he explained that at the end of the growing season he ships in truckloads of pumpkins and other fall type plants and decoration plants i.e. corn stocks and the such. Then of course after Halloween and Thanksgiving he has Christmas trees. It all made sense. After Christmas he shuts down for about eight weeks all starts again in early spring. How cool is that?

Eric was super helpful and that spending about 20 bucks, I didn't realize it was that much I bought tomatoes what I thought was a a dollar and $.88 for a section of four plants and actually it was a dollar 88 times 4. I bought peppers one zucchini, four tomatoes,basil, purple Sage, parsley there is another herb I purchased but I can't remember what it was. Oh, I also got lemongrass and orange marigolds. The last group of plants I was instructed was for pest control. I knew about marigolds and tomatoes but I've never used lemongrass for insect control.

I really expected this planting expedition was going to take the rest of the morning and probably all afternoon however one of the seniors happened to see me working came out and offered to assist which was more than happy she also had some great ideas of where to place my starts. We visited a lot while she helped me and I really appreciate your input. She also shared with me where the faucet and hose and sprayer was. I had prepared myself to carry bottles of water out to the garden boxes. We finished the whole project in about an hour and I was e free for the rest of the day.

I really enjoyed meeting beginning to know my new friend Eric. It's great that he is just across the street in this little gardening Mecca. I don't know why I feel this way but I sense I'm going to be seen a great deal more of him this summer.




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